Helljumper
by WritofUnions
Summary: Major Lucy Corbalis is alone. Her family is dead, her ship crashed, and she's stuck on an alien world. She's rebuilding her life with the local inhabitants, a chillingly familiar world of fantasy esque people, but its only a matter of time before she takes to the stars.
1. Tribute

Downtown Casbah, Tribute

August 28, 2552 21:27 hours

Lucy stood at the intersection between Main and Fulcrum. It was a warzone, as tended to be in her line of work. She kicked a dead hinge head at her feet and scanned the street. The darkness of night had set in like a heavy blanket on the intersection, as an EMP killed all the lights, but beyond, the night was bright with human artillery and covenant craft. "Egészségére, friends," she said as she slid a fresh magazine into her sniper rifle and started to walk off to her next rendezvous point. Amongst the covvies lying dead in the fortified street were several civilians and marines.

"Maj, the colonel just moved the rendezvous again," one of her men told her over the battalion comms.

"Again?" She huffed. "Send me it and somebody get me a hog out here," she said, her voice rigid and commanding as a Major should be. She waited as the new nav point blinked onscreen in her VISR. She saw it and gasped. A civilian evacuation point. 2 blocks from her home. Her family was likely there. She hadn't heard from them since she was sent down to Szurdok on Reach, and 2 weeks later and a redeployment a kilometer from them hadn't yielded any other results. "Asap," she added, regarding the hog.

She walked towards the new rendezvous point briskly, encountering and neutralizing some grunts along the way. After about an hour, a hog with an ODST and a wounded airman drove up. The helljumper's shoulder armor had the 19th battalion insignia on it. One of her men.

"Got a name?" She asked the airman. He just looked at her with an expression of stupor and went back looking somewhere beyond the windshield. "Thousand yard stare, I see. Helljumper, we ready to move?"

"Yep. Tizenkilencedik, igaz?" He asked, switching to hungarian.

"Igen. Mozog, helljumper!" She ordered as she climbed onto the turret bay. The hog roared forward and leapt over a pile of rubble and alien bodies. She smiled inside her helmet as her HUD warped and changed to match the turret. A red triangle appeared with a decreasing number. 500 meters ahead the nav point ended. She could see the floodlights illuminating the park. She knew that park. She took her son, Leo, there whenever she got leave. She almost fell into a daydream, but a sudden crack erupted from a nearby shelled out building and a blue bolt of light slammed into the driver's skull. Brain and glass and metal and ash splattered onto the dash. The hog spun out of control and right into the park's instacrete barricades. Lucy leapt out and grabbed the still shocked airman. Several marines jumped from the other side of the barricades and took the airman.

"You ok ma'am?" One asked. "Nasty crash. That sniper's been giving us hell for a while. Jackals have been battering us from that road too."

"Great great great," she said, looking over the marines, an easy feat for a woman taller than most men. "Who's the ranking officer here?"

"Colonel Williamsen," one said. "There are some spartans here who have command over the offensive operations, too."

That almost got her attention, but she still focused on finding her family. No luck. She took her helmet off and shouted their names.

She got a response.

"Markus! Leo! Where are you?!" She screamed in their general direction.

"Over here!" Her husband said, still in nowhere in particular. Lucy started to wade into the crowd, with many parting for the gigantic ODST lady and many more staying put, packed in by the thick walls of refugees everywhere.

"Contact!" Someone yelled. MA5b fire drowned out everything but the panicked screams of running civilians. She slapped her helmet back on and ran towards the firefight. 3 Elites were charging the barricades, followed by a horde of jackals. She noticed the spartans get on a warthog and floor it straight through the crowd of covvies. Most dodged, but an unlucky few crunched underfoot. The warthog continued down the road, farther and farther away from them.

"Are the spartans leaving us?!" One loudmouth shouted, stirring a new wave of panic through the civilians.

"Shut up and mow 'em down!" Lucy shouted at the marine. Several battered human dropships landed in the park and opened fire at the Jackals, taking out the remaining aliens that the marines and Spartans didn't get.

"Civvies, load up! 30 people a ship, no more!" A small man in dented body armor yelled. His voice betrayed his weak stature. He talked like he was twice as tall and half hinge head. Like a spell was cast, the rowdy civilians quieted down and loaded up into the dropships. Lucy scanned the crowds of civilians as soon as she was sure the aliens were all dead.

"Markus!!!" She screamed. "Leo!!! Where are you?!" She stormed into the remaining crowds.

"Lucy!" Markus shouted back. Her head wheeled towards her husband's voice. "Farthest left ship!" He shouted, raising his arms. She muscled her way through the crowd and almost rammed right into him. She scooped him up in a smothering embrace, to which he replied with a sloppy kiss on her stained, cracked visor. Leo waddled up and hugged her leg.

"Is that you, mommy?" The tiny 3 year old asked.

"None other!" She said, as she tossed her helmet aside and picked him up. The last dropship took off, leaving only a few marines and Lucy's family in the messy, burnt, sorry excuse for a park.

"Are you two ok?" Lucy asked, looking over both Leo and Markus.

"Yeah, just a little shaken. A few close calls. I think we're the only ones from the apartment building who made it out," Markus told her. Lucy frowned.

"Mrs. Anderson didn't make it?" She said, slightly upset. She was gonna miss the sweet old lady.

"I saw her. I know she didn't," He replied. Leo tugged at her arm and accidentally activated the mounted TacPad on her wrist, oblivious to his parents' conversation.

"Cool," he whispered, before Lucy pulled her arm up and checked it.

"Now now, don't touch that," she told Leo in a motherly voice.

"Awww," he whined, but he let go of her. Another dropship landed behind them.

"Everybody load up!" The crew chief shouted. The remaining marines, maybe a squad or two, clambered up and held their hands out to the trio. "Well? Come on!" The crew chief shouted again over the whine of the dropships engines.

Lucy hugged her family tight. "I love you guys. Lets ge-"

A muffled bang sounded and a molten blade cut through her right arm. She gasped as she fell, but her ears were filled with a short lived, high pitched, childish scream. Leo's scream. She hit the ground and tried to stand, using her right arm for support and her left to draw her pistol, but nothing happened. Then she realized.

She had no right arm. She looked over to her family and saw them slumped on the ground, and the dropship behind them careened into the ground, erupting into a fireball. She heard a hiss and managed to sit up. She was ringed by 7 Jackals.

"Nishum kyra mut vey antangu Mev'ut, japhat?" One of them hissed to another. It hissed a reply. Lucy saw another Jackal grab her husband's body and start to go through his pockets. Her vision faded in color and turned red. She didn't know how, but she rose and charged the looting jackal, stabbing the disgusting monster again and again with her knife that she somehow drew with her available hand. Another jackal shot her in the back, taking her attention away from the screaming, violently bleeding, dying beast beneath her. She scowled at the stupid thing and emptied her M6d's clip on it and an unlucky one next to it.

"Kibaszott undorító szörnyű kurva!" She managed to scream at them as she launched the pistol at another Jackal with so much force it cracked the creature's thin skull. She relished its screams of pain and ran towards one of the 3 remaining jackals. One fled, but the other 2 opened fire. In her blind, adrenaline fueled rage, she didn't feel any of it. She threw her knife blindly at one and somehow impaled its chest. The creature shuddered and pulled the knife out, a grisly mess of blood and organs coming out with it. The last one stood quivering in fear until she bowled into it and twisted her armored foot on one arm, grinding the weak, hollow bones into dust. She fell on it and swung punch after punch after punch into the creature's thin, elongated head. Minutes later, she was still mashing the pulped skull and strange purplish/grey brains. She ignored the sound of an engine getting louder. She ignored the bright lights. She ignored everything but the excruciating pain of her cauterized arm, crippling realization of her dead family, and the ecstasy inducing thought of exacting brutal revenge on the monsters that ruined and almost ended her life. She couldn't ignore the rough armored hand grabbing her by the intact shoulder. She wheeled around and hit the reflective blue faceplate of an alien.

A sangheili. She punched again.

"Rothadás a pokolban, akkor kibaszott dinoszauruszok!" She screamed with all her breath.

"Calm down. Major, calm down. I'm a spartan," the scum told her. Then her vision cleared, and she saw it was a spartan. She collapsed into its arms and started to sob. She felt numb, she felt tired.

"Dawn, we have a wounded command level officer. We're moving to the extraction point. Make sure a surgery suite's ready for her," one of the spartans said. The other one heaved her into the passenger seat of the warthog. Lucy's vision started to dim, and the last thing she remembered was the thud of a spartan hopping into the driver's seat, then the thud of another getting on the turret.

**Allright, part one of my second series. How do yall like it? What did I do well and what should I improve on?**


	2. Feet First

Unknown system, Uncharted space

September 19th, 2552, 00:00 hours

Lucy woke up. A navy medic was checking something just out of her field of view. She turned to see it. IVs. She followed it. They ran into her left arm. Huh. Usually it was her right arm they used. Her arm. Something seemed familiar. What was it…? Her arm… her arm, her arm, her arm. Her arm!

She wheeled her head around and looked at where her arm should've been, and didn't see it.

Instead, she saw a matte grey robotic arm. She stared at it in wonder, and when she felt a phantom itch, she scratched it. And felt it. She drew back ever so slightly in surprize, and in curiosity, she attempted to move the arm. It moved. She willed her right hand to clench into a fist, then splay out. Both movements worked fluidly, even more so than her left hand, her dominant hand.

"Like it?" Somebody asked. She looked over and saw a surgeon walking in. "We never got your real arm, so we had to do the next best thing," he explained.

"Where are we?" Lucy asked, a trace amount of fear lacing her voice, along with a generous helping of confusion. "Who are you?"

"I'm Captain Kyle Cynaw, the head surgeon on board the UNSC Dawn Under Heaven. We're in slipspace to a random location," he answered.

"What happened?" Lucy asked.

"You were beating a dead hor- er Jackal. Heh. A sniper took your arm off. You were lucky, the shot cauterized the wounds…" He continued, but Lucy lost focus. She remembered what happened. She remembered everything. She started to sob. She couldn't stop, the tears welled despite her best efforts, then the floodgates broke and she descended into heaving sobs that wracked her body.

"What's wrong?" She heard the surgeon ask sympathetically. As much as she wanted to stop and explain, she couldn't. Now the memories were flashing through her head. She remembered meeting Markus, their first date, the kiss, the wedding, finding out she was pregnant, meeting their little boy, Leo. Holding Leo to her and feeding him, his first steps, his laugh, his adorable smile. That damn smile. It was gone.

"It's gone! It's all gone!" She screamed in anguish, still sobbing. The surgeon seemed distressed. He frowned and made some subtle hand gestures. 2 MPs walked in and held her down, firmly but gently. Just like Markus.

"Markus, god damn it…" she sobbed even harder. She felt like she was gonna puke. The surgeon slid a needle into her arm and injected her with something. She didn't consciously recognize it, but a small voice in her told her to calm down and use some reason. That voice told her it was a sedative. She didn't care, she was too deep in her sadness and anger to go under. The MPs tried to strap her down, but she managed to break free and storm out into the hallway. An alarm sounded and several other MPs gave chase to her.

"Ma'am! Stop!" One MP shouted. She slowed. She knew that voice. She saw it, a burly ODST. She didn't stop, but charged by him with her new arm as a shield.

She quickly made it into the drop room. She ripped her locker open and hastily worked into her undersuit, then the armor. She grabbed her sniper, an m90 shotgun, and a prototype battle rifle, along with her bag of belongings and a ruck with spare gear. Strange. She was gonna commit suicide, but she packed like she was trying to leave. The Heaven shuddered as it left slipspace. Something was wrong. Her sadness disappeared as a wave of terror hit her. She heard the alarms go from relatively quiet to absolutely insane.

"All crew, abandon ship! Due to damage sustained in Combat prior to the slipspace jump, the ship's gonna blow! All crew, abandon ship! All crew, abandon ship!" The shipboard AI blared in her soft feminine voice. Convenient exposition, Lucy thought as she slammed her stuff into her pod and shut the door. Her grief was overwhelmed by a primitive, panicked program to survive. The door shut and the familiar 4 beep countdown tone started. There was no going back. The pod fired.

"Ma'am, I wasn't expecting you back so soon," her operations AI, Durandel, explained in his rich baritone voice.

"I know, but I don't care. Listen, download all the blueprints and survival information gear you can. Clear up all the space you need for it, just leave something intact so I can still communicate with people," she frantically ordered the AI. The pale gold light in the pod's terminal dimmed almost to a pinprick for a scarily long few seconds.

"Do-..." he said, but he was cut off by a muffled thud. Lucy looked behind the pod using external cameras. The Heaven had crashed on some alien planet. No, not a planet. A moon. The planet was a blue and green and brown sphere beneath her. She was being pulled right towards it.

"I'm already in hell. Where do I go feet first to now?" She half joked to herself as the pod shook, entering the planet's atmosphere. "Der," she said, summoning the AI, "Pop the hatch" she said as she took off her helmet.

"Please confirm, ma'am. We're in this planet's upper atmosphere and you appear to not have your helmet on."

Lucy hesitated. She wanted to see her family, but that tiny voice of rationality, god was it stubborn. She couldn't do it. She wanted the embrace of death but couldn't take the le- "Aahaaugh!" She shouted as the pod rattled violently. She slapped her helmet back on instinctively. "Start the music," she said enthusiastically as her old ground pounding instincts flipped on like a light.

"Confirmed," Der told her, and her helmet's speakers started blasting her "Drop" playlist. First up was an ancient song from a military movie. Danger Zone, she thought it was called. The roar of atmosphere rushing by almost drowned out the music, so she cranked the song up in turn.

"Gonna take a ride into the danger zone!" she sang along. It was hot. Jesus, it was roasting. "Der, status report on the pod," she shouted over the music.

"Pod's starting to burn up. At this rate, you'll still hit the ground alright," he answered. Lucy's grief cursed her good luck while her instincts and her logic both sighed in relief. "5 klicks up," he finished.

"You know the drill. Pop the chute when we get low," she said with a hint of happiness peeking through. She knew what to do, that was good. Her mind cleared. She felt a rush. It was bracing. "Max the music!" She yelled just as the song ended. Another song blared, this one a flip music song by her friend's band, Fist of the Unicorn. She started to sing along to the rapid, booming lyrics. "Watch the ground, watch the skies, but n-" she sang before the drag chute deployed. "Go time."

The pod slammed into the ground and the door flew off. She drew her battle rifle and scanned. Nothing. She came to her senses suddenly. She tried to die, that's why she was there. And there was nothing to kill her either. There was nothing there, just tan, wheat-like alien grass. There was nothing for her either.

"Gone," she muttered. She looked up to the sky, a familiar, bright blue. To her west was an endless field of the tan grass, and to the east, faintly on the horizon, a tall, snow capped mountain range.

"Ma'am, I've lost contact with all UNSC contacts," Durandel suddenly told her. "Are we ready to move? You should set up a camp nearby," he advised.

"I…" Lucy started, but didn't finish. "Where are we?" She finally asked.

"Unknown."

Lucy sighed. She clicked her rifles into place and filled the bag of her backup gear with the rations and small survival pack that lined her pod. She started to walk off, dragging the sack behind her, returning to take Durandel's chip from the terminal in the pod. She walked off, away from the mountains and into the sea of grass.

She walked.

And walked.

And yet more walked. She lost her spirit a few minutes after she started, letting the grief batter her as she trudged along for minutes, hours, and possibly even days, but whether or not it was days, Lucy wasn't sure. She curled into a ball when night came and pressed her back into the sack of supplies, like she was being spooned. She held back her tears as she fell asleep. The next day was largely the same, as was the next after that. Eventually, she saw a squat mountain on the horizon, a plume of smoke rising off its peak. Either a volcano or a big fire. She walked towards it.

And walked.

Nothing. 4 days and it was still there, smoldering, but she still hadn't seen anything else different. It left her to wonder why she jumped from the ship and let her stew in her grief. She got lucky the next day. She nearly fell into a stream. She stopped and scooped some water up. She ripped her helmet off, and without even thinking, plunged her head into the swift clear water, gulping down the water as it came. Finally, she drew her head back and breathed the air. It seemed crisp.

"I need a bath," she told herself suddenly. She tore from her armor and undersuit like it was alight. Before she knew it, she was waist deep in the water and scrubbing her stump furiously with a giant leaf. She wondered if the new arm was waterproof. She sincerely hoped, seeing it was submerged in the water.

After about 15 minutes of bathing, she pulled herself out and slipped into her armor again. She felt fresh, but she needed something else. She needed food. She rooted through her bag and ripped out a ration bar. They tasted terrible, but she hadn't eaten since before the drop. She gently opened the food and looked at the bar like it was instructions to salvation, then wolfed it down, trying not to focus on the terrible aspects of it, being everything except for the nutrition.

After her break, she packed up and trudged down the field again. The mountain was still far away. She had just about had enough of the wandering, but wandered still.

And wandered.

She continued her aimless trek for yet more days. There was still nothing worth seeing, but during the night, she noticed something strange. Something she had no idea she had never noticed before. The grass glowed. She tried eating some, and it tasted utterly terrible. As she laid down in the endless field that night, she stared at the beautiful, alien field of stars above her. It hit her just how alone she was. She had a quiet dumb AI and her own company. For all she knew, she was on the far side of the galaxy, or maybe even in an entirely different one. And she was the only person here. It was crushing what little spirit she had left. She lost her arm, her family, her home, and now even knowledge of where she was.

"That's it," she said. She finally hit her tipping point. She drew her battle rifle and checked that it had a round in the chamber. It gleamed bronze in the light of the 2 large moons and the unusually bright (for night) sky.

"Szabadság," she said in hungarian, as to honor her men and her husband one last time. She put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

It didn't budge.

"Shit," she said. She flipped the safety off and put her finger on the trigger. "Goo-" she started, but a faint thundering sounded from the north. A familiar sound. Horses. Horses? Here? She stood up and scanned the field with the rifle. She saw a horse's head towering above the fields.

"Hello?" A voice called.

"Halt!" Lucy shouted, her helmet now on. The horse got closer. She didn't see a rider, but she saw a human's soldiers on it. Wait. No. Those were the horse's shoulders. "What?" She muttered to herself. What the hell was going on? She stalked forward, mindful of the several other soldiers mounted on horseback aside the walking horse thing.

"Hello? I see you. I mean you no harm. Lay down your arms and come forward," the horse thing told her, its jet black eyes looking her dead on, scanning her strange armor and even stranger… thing in her hand. She complied… partially. She walked forward with her rifle at the ready, aimed right at its head.

"Who are you and where are we?" She demanded.

"I am Cosmos Noctastella, king of Ravenloft and its lands. We're in the grasslands right now. We saw your comet and gave chase, and now it seems we've found you. I personally will extend an invitation to you to return to Ravenloft with my party and I," he answered. He held out his hand. It was almost human, save the light coat of matte black fur covering it and the short claws that took the place of fingernails. She didn't take it, but she lowered her rifle.

"Let me grab my stuff," she said, her grief dumbfounded at her attempts to continue living. She dragged her sack out and clipped Durandel's chip to her helmet's port. The AI integrated with her suit, the closest you could get with directly linking with an AI. "Lead the way," she told the horse. "And what are you?"

"My race? My creator called me a 'Thakwaash', so I call myself that as well. Now, you're a Valkyrie, are you not?"

"A valkyrie?" Lucy chuckled. "I guess you could say that, but I'm really just a tall woman." She answered.

"Would you like some help with your bag? It's several days ride to Ravenloft," the King offered her.

"I… sure, thank you," she said, offering her bag to the closest soldier. If they wouldn't let her get the bag back, she had a gun and they had swords. "Your grace," she suddenly remembered to add.

"Can you ride?" The king asked her.

"Of course. Do you have a horse to spare, your grace?"

"Yes, mount up and ready to ride," he said as one of the soldiers offered her a dark grey destrier. She climbed on and shifted to a comfortable position.

"Ready," she said.

"Then lets go," the king said. With that, they rode north. Lucy couldn't help but think how close to death she'd been, how much she wanted to die, only to be saved by random chance and human instinct. "Funny," she said. Did she die? Was she in hell? What sort of demented place was she in? Well, if she was in hell…

"Feet first."


	3. The King's Arrival

September 30 (?), 2552

Kingdom of Ravenloft, Unknown Planet, Uncharted Star System

"We're almost there, Valkyrie," Cosmos told Lucy. She hadn't opened up to him past the basics of what she did and what her gear did, though the king had treated her kindly from the start and let her address him informally. The men at arms were quiet, though the ones who talked to her were also kind and incredibly chivalrous. All in all, it was either good company or a convincing trap. Oh well, she was in the snare and couldn't care less about it.

"How far?" Lucy asked, more curious than demanding. She used to hate horseback riding, but the journey to supposed salvation had given her a new respect for the magnificent creature she rode upon. She rubbed the horse's head and looked at the stout, flowery hill ahead of them. The alien wildflowers looked enticing, like the ones at her family's gardens in Arcadia.

"Just over the hill of flowers. That one right ahead," Cosmos said. He walked over to her. That was still the strangest thing. He was 3 meters tall and weighed as much as an armored spartan, but still moved with the speed and grace of a normal horse. They trotted up to the hill and started the descent. It was covered in fragrant wildflowers with colors all across the rainbow, and probably beyond the spectrum too. She clipped her helmet to her chestplate and smelled the wildflowers. It was all so familiar. She couldn't help but remember the gardens her family maintained, both the ones in Arcadia and their ancestral seat in England. Both were gone, one by choice, the other by plasma. She remembered the summer training during her time in ROTC, the rolling green hills and their numerous oak trees with a barren desert abruptly starting right after a river. The first deployment, a counter-insurgency op in the massive Pine forests of Mamore. The firefights against covvies when she and her unit were marching from Mannassass to New Alexandria. The park a block from her apartment. The evacuation. The firefight. The sniper. Those damn sakálok. Her revenge. She noticed she was both crying and laughing, earning her strange looks from a few men at arms. Then she stopped at once. She looked over the crest of the hill, and the sight took her breath away.

A sprawling medieval cityscape spread across a valley, with astonishingly tall copper colored cliffs to the east and a sprawling ocean dotted with volcanoes to the west and south. The city sparkled, as Cosmos had explained to her several days before, it was glass, metal and stone. They had somehow come to use all those materials commonly, but were still stuck using horse and sword and writing by hand. Every building had glass, and most all had metal. If not metal, then stonework (which he said was exquisitely carved) was used. A bustling port of wood and stone was nestled in a large natural harbor just north and south of a huge stone arch. 6 towers standing well over 200 meters tall loomed from the arch, which was itself 300 meters higher than the sapphire blue sea churning at its base. A 7th tower stood twice as tall as its sister towers, which surrounded it in a hexagon. The 6 all sparkled with splendor so bright it almost hurt to look at from kilometers away. The 7th stood tall and proud, a work of dark grey stone and steel. Its jet black windows drank in the sunlight like a greedy plant, all except the dome. The hexagonal tower was crested with an open air pavilion on the roof covered with a 25 meter tall clear glass dome. If this was hell, it seemed a lot nicer than anything she'd heard about it.

"It's beautiful," she said under her breath.

"Indeed. Over a millennia, I've watched and guided its growth," Cosmos said, now aside her. It was still unnerving that he could almost look her in the eyes standing while she was on horseback.

"You look awfully… alive for a millennia old," Lucy noted. She was taken aback. He'd never mentioned his age to her before.

"Vampirism. Something I was "gifted" during my exploits. One of the reasons I hate them," he replied. Lucy was even more confused now than ever. She consulted Durandel about Cosmos and the Thakwaash. He came up empty handed, leaving her completely unsurprised, even when she saw fangs when he smiled at her. The smile was kind, human, but eerie all the same for a creature like him, like a smiling fox.

"I see. Anyway, now that we're here, what am I gonna do? Where will I stay?" Lucy asked.

"You're my honored guest. You can live with me in the Tower of the Flare. There are many unoccupied chambers within it. Of course, if you decide to decline my offer, you can make your way in the city itself. Do be warned, however, it looks elegant, though the appearance is about the most appealing aspect of the city," Cosmos explained.

"Rough region?" Lucy asked, unsurprised. She'd rarely been to a large city that didn't have much of an issue with crime.

"It can be. Most folk are decent, and the city guard is ever vigilant, but there's always been a criminal undercurrent here," he said as they walked down the hill and past a guard station built into the impressive stone and steel wall. The guards gaped when they saw Lucy, a 2 meter tall woman in alien armor, and were only broken from their awe when they saw the king beside her. They knelt.

"Your majesty," one, likely the captain, said to Cosmos. "Welcome back. Any luck with the hunting trip?"

"Not in the realm of game, though we have a Valkyrie in our midst," Cosmos said. "We're en route to the keep. Might we have an escort?"

"Of course, your majesty," the captain answered. He rose and ordered half a dozen guards on horseback. "See them safely to the keep," he boomed, then returned to the king with the men in tow. "They're at your command, your majesty," he said. With that, they rode through the streets of Ravenloft.

The ride was long, almost an hour. The streets were filthy, as one would expect for a medieval sprawl. Excrement lined the street, flowing down in gutters. Bodies of rodents lay in the street, being fought over by dogs, cats, and urchins. The markets and bazaars were better. Local smiths and grocers and other entrepreneurs lined the "square of sale," as it was called. Just beyond it, the "square of spice" spread, this one crammed full with stalls and stands crewed by foreign smiths and showmen and traders. She even saw a sign for a mercenary company. Then something hit her full in the face. The people not only spoke english, but wrote it too. She understood almost every written word (though she guessed most of the people looking to buy didn't).

"A city, too be sure. I can't say I've seen one like it before," Lucy said.

"They have cities where you come from?" One of the guardsmen joked. "I thought valkyries came from villages that taught women war and pl-" he continued before he saw the venomous stare of one of the men at arms. The trip continued in relative silence, though many a passerby saw the procession and knelt, with even more gaping openly at Lucy, who by now had untied her luminous orange hair. The guards at the gate immediately opened the gate when the group crossed the stone bridge spanning a rushing black river that cut off the castle and the connected woods from the city. These guards didn't kneel, but most nodded at them. As they reached the gates, the 6 city guardsmen peeled off and went back along the route they had taken.

The gates close behind them and they made their way to the stables. They dismounted and let stableboys take the horses. Lucy couldn't help but get a vibe similar to what she got reading fantasy holonovels as a kid. She was dangerously close to making a joke about it, but held her tongue when Cosmos trotted… walked? Moved towards her.

"Welcome to the Ravenhold," he said.


	4. Sleep Tight

"Well, I suppose there's a thing for birds here? So then where are they?" Lucy asked as she scanned the sky for any birds, let alone a raven or a crow.

"The ravens used to infest the entire city, but now only a few flocks remain," he explained as he held the door to the tower open for her.

As she walked to the door, she took in the ornate carvings in the stone doorway. The lines seemed not to blend into any discernible pattern, but they were nonetheless incredibly done.

"Intricate," she said as she crossed under the threshold into the tower. This was it, she was in the keep. She knew that she was officially within guest rights, as Cosmos had explained it to her on the journey, but that didn't mean she was any less suspicious of… everything. She subconsciously reached for her handgun, but decided against it in the last second.

"There's no need for you to be so wary," Cosmos said as he came up beside her. "Though I do understand."

Lucy said nothing and simply continued walking, though to where, she didn't know. "So…. where should I be going?" She asked.

"Where do you want to go?" Cosmos replied simply.

"That's a great question that I don't have an answer to," she said, now paying more attention to the walls and doors in the hall than whatever could pop around the corner.

"Then perhaps getting you settled in a room would be best," Cos said, pulling ahead of her. As far as Lucy was concerned, this all was alright with her; she had a place to stay, and if he tried to attack her at the moment, she had him right in her sights. They went down the hall and to an… elevator?

"Where'd this come from?" Lucy asked, perplexed more than anything.

"A feature left behind by the things that built the castle. Technology from our creator that we've long since forgotten," Cos explained.

"Sounds cryptic. Mind explaining what you mean?"

"Forgive me, I'm used to talking to people raised knowing our history. Long ago, this world was hostile, but our creator came from the stars in a boat of steel and tamed the world, molding it to his bidding. He created t-"

"I'm not looking to hear your creation myth, just tell me where the damn elevator came from!" Lucy snapped, a flush of embarrassment hitting her cheeks a few seconds later. "Sorry, it's just…"

"No need to apologize, I do chat a lot, and you do seem to have been through quite the ordeal," Cos said.

"I… yeah, more than you'd know," Lucy said, getting a melancholic smile from Cos. "I am curious about the li-" She started, just as the elevator came to a stop.

"Follow me," Cos said as he stepped from the metal box, into a gloomy stone hallway. Lucy followed, making sure her helmet was secured. Her VISR snapped on, giving her some much needed visual assistance.

"Dark," she simply stated.

"Indeed. Sorry about that, hardly anyone comes up to this floor, and darkness isn't an issue for my eyes," Cos explained.

"Friggin count chocula over here," Lucy muttered into her helmet.

"Who's 'Count Chocula'?" Cos asked. Lucy flinched.

"You heard me? Through my helmet?"

"Yes, my hearing is better too. So who's this 'Count'?"

"H-" Lucy started before breaking down into giggles. She composed herself after a few seconds. "It's a fictional character used to advertise an **old** breakfast food," She explained.

"Oh. Why call me that?"

"He's a vampire."

"I see," Cos said simply. He turned a corner and the sound of his footsteps… er… hoofsteps? footsteps stopped.

"We are at this floor's bedchambers. You can have your pick. All doors from here to the end of the hall open into apartments made for visiting nobles and the likes. Is there anything else you need?"

"That should be it, thank you," Lucy said. She stepped inside, dragging her bag behind her, and shut the door. The room itself was nice. A large glass window ran an entire wall, curving gently with the shape of the tower. Off to one side, she could see a room with tiled floors, rather than the rugs and smooth, cold stone of the rest of the chamber. She set her bag down and slipped out of her armor.

"Ugh, that shit's heavy," she grunted. She threw herself into the bed, hitting with a crack.

"Uhf. Ahhhh fuuuuck, my back. What the hell is this bed made out of?" She rolled around onto her stomach, her back's newfound pain slowly fading. Before she was even facing the bed, she pulled the blankets over to see what was beneath. Of course, just as her luck would have it, it was a stone bed with a thin mattress.

"I know I say I can sleep on anything, but this is something else," she said to herself. She let herself chuckle a bit, but was cut short when the laughter caused a sharp pain to shoot up her back. She couldn't help but groan angrily, although that changed to a scream of agony as she tried to rise and felt something else pop out of place.

_Okay Luce, don't move. Just… she inhaled relax. You're a medic, you know how to treat this. Relax. Breath out. Breathe in… breathe out. Get out of bed and go to your medical bag in 3, 2… 1_. And with that, she slowly rose and dragged her way to her bag. She unclipped it and pulled out a painkiller. She set it on her tongue and felt it melt, taking away the agony with it. With a sigh, she stood up straight. The pain was still present, but dull, and only in one spot. She felt it and felt around it, and, now certain that it was a dislocated rib, she rooted through her bag and found the tool for just this: a compact exercise roller. She set it down, got herself in position, and prepped herself. Painkiller or no, this would hurt like a bitch.

_Ok. 3. 2. 1-_

There was a knock at the door, taking her from her concentration.

"Valkyrie? Are you alright?" Cosmos said from the other side of the door.

"Yea, just give me a s-" she started before a spike of pain hit her. "Aaaahhhrgg! Shit, is it already wearing off?" Indeed, by some fluke, she could feel the pain ebbing back. "FU**UCK**!"

"You don't sound alright. I'm coming in," Cosmos said, already turning the handle. Lucy huffed and set herself on the roller. The time was now or never, and she sure as hell wouldn't go the "never" route. Cosmos watched as she hurriedly got herself comfortable and tried to press herself into it, only making the pain worse. With a gasp, she spasmed and cried out again as she struggled to get up, with no luck.

"Here, let me help," Cosmos said, offering his hand.

"Wha- nghhh! What could you do? You don't even know what happened!"

"You're right, I don't. But I do have healing abilities," he explained.

"Great, the horsepire has magic," Lucy groaned. She set herself down again on the roller and gritted her teeth in pain. She pushed herself down, felt a pop, and blacked out.


	5. Wild Night

October (?), 2552

Ravenkeep, Ravenloft

Unknown system, Uncharted space

"Ok marines, you know the music!" A voice said over the radio. Lucy looked around her pod. Her eyes drifted to their usual spot, a laminate film picture taped to the pod wall. Her cradling her newborn son as her husband hugged her from behind. She was smiling, even as her son drooled on her dress uniform.

"Heh." She smiled, thinking of that m-

"Time to dance," another voice responded, yanking Lucy out of her daydream. The famous 4 beep signal filled her ears, and she launched into the inky blackness below. She fell deeper and deeper into its embrace, feeling a pain she didn't even notice start to fade. Slowly but surely, she felt the pain subside as a warm feeling spread through her.

"Valkyrie," a familiar voice said.

"Huh? Who's that? Who's there?!" Lucy responded, now completely alert. She yanked an M7S smg from the wall mount and pointed it at the door.

"Calm down," the voice said soothingly. "You're alright. Now wake," it said. "Wake up, Valkyrie."

Lucy hesitated. Everything told her "wrong" but her gut. She took the path of her gut and popped the door for some inexplicable reason, and leapt into the howling darkness outside.

"Ugh. Jesus. What happened?" Lucy said, holding a hand. She looked at it. It was large, calloused, covered in short, matte black hair, and ended with short claws in place of nails.

"Ahh, sheeit!" She couldn't help but pull her hand away and feel for her knife with her robotic hand, even as she took in the situation.

"No need for such caution. You're alright," the hand's owner said. Lucy looked up to see Cosmos looking into her eyes. Her hand tensed, but she let her other hand drift away from where her knife would be. "And to answer your question," the horse-thing said, "Your ribs were dislocated. I healed you with a spell and moved you to the keep's barber. He's been caring for you, and I check up when I can."

"How long was I out?"

"Four years, seven months, ten days"

Lucy's eyes widened and her jaw went slack. She was on the verge of freaking out again, until she saw Cosmos smile. "I'm just joking," he said. Sorry if I scared you. You were out for about 2 days. Or just a few hours over 3 in your time, if your familiar is to be believed."

Lucy went from anger at the joke to confusion at the "familiar" comment, then straight to dread.

"Familiar? What familiar?"

"It calls itself Durandel," Cosmos explained, holding out the data chip. It glowed blue and seemed to be in perfect condition, so at least Der was still active. Still, he was chatty for a dumb AI, even one designed for ODSTs, and may well have said something he shouldn't have to Cosmos. Without further hesitation, she snatched the chip up and held it close.

"What did he tell you?" She said defensively, almost in a combat mode.

"He told me his name and his diagnosis of your condition, which was correct, and his recommended treatment, which made absolutely no sense to me. Regardless, you should be ambulatory, if sore," he explained, offering his hand to her. Cautiously, she offered her robotic hand. He pulled her up to a sitting position, and fuck was he right, she was sore.

"Damn, this is sore," she said as she felt around under the seemingly silk shirt she wore. As she pressed her hand gently under her shoulder blade, she felt a dull, warm pain ebb into focus. As she drew her hand back, she had a thought. Cosmos may have seen her undressed, and that thought unnerved her completely. She pulled back until she hit the wall.

"What's the matter? Am I chopped liver?" Cosmos said deadpan, though seeing that it didn't help the situation, he relented. "Durandel told me that your culture's humor tends to soften your emotions, though maybe this isn't the time."

"You're right. Now what did you see?"

"Hmm? See what?"

"When you were healing me. What did you see?"

"Ah, that. Yes, I saw your bare chest. I suppose you'd expect me to have either lusted for you or shied away from you. Don't worry, I just ignored it and flipped you over to cast the spell. Speaking of which, you do indeed seem to be moving alright."

Lucy, as much as she wanted to be angry, couldn't be. Still, she was defensive.

"What did Durandel tell you that you didn't follow?"

"Medical advice. He advised puncturing you and injecting "biofoam" into the wound, or "medigel" if I couldn't find that biofoam stuff. Then he said to give you "Statenizol" after you awoke. Naturally, I have no idea what a single one of those things meant."

Lucy couldn't help but audibly sigh. No way would anybody here have any of those things, and the actual treatment wasn't even a permanent solution. "He can be a bit… inconsiderate sometimes. And he doesn't adapt well," she said. She scanned the room. It looked like… well, something between a hospital ward and the recreation of a surgical suite from a 17th century Welsh village she remembered seeing in a museum back on one of her leave trips to Earth.

Earth.

Tribute.

Home.

Fuck.

"Nope, nope nope nope I am not going down that rabbit hole again," she said, but she could feel that moment slowly nibbling away at her resolve.

"Rabbit hole? What's that about?"

"Doesn't matter. I need a fuckin drink," Lucy said, getting up. She thankfully had pants on, though she knew she wouldn't truly care.

"Oh… well, there's a bar here within the keep. I can also get a servant to bring us some food and drinks. The city's likely a bit too… foreign for you," Cos offered.

"Sounds like a challenge. City it is."

"You're certain?"

"Where's the stables?"

"Horses? Nonsense," Cosmos huffed, annoyed. "A horse will be stolen in the best of places. I'll take you. Get outside, where there's clearance enough for both of us, and I'll let you ride on my shoulders. Follow me." Lucy did, as she had no idea what path to take. Exiting the room, she saw he wasn't lying about this being "the barber's," as there was a station where a barber cut a broad shouldered man's once flowing coal hair. Both the barber and the man bowed their heads when Cosmos walked in.

"Your grace," they both said, waiting for a reply.

"Subjects," Cosmos simply said. As if nothing had happened, the 2 men went back to barbering and being barbered.

Lucy's thoughts started drifting back to Tribute. _Shit. Ok, breathe deeply and ignore it, she thought. Inhale… exhale. Inhale… exhale… just keep this up until you hit the town_, she thought to herself. Before long, they were outside, and she had clambered onto Cosmos's shoulders. It felt weird, a mix of normalcy, intimacy, and something along the lines of being babysat by a benevolent demon.

"Be wary, the safest area to get a drink within the city is still a rough one," Cosmos said.

"I'll be fine," Lucy said. She figured she would be, but she had no way of truly knowing. They thundered over the cobblestone path down to the gates from the keep. Lucy zoned out, feeling the wind whip through her hair. She took in a deep breath of wind coming in behind her from the ocean. It smelled of fish, salt, and kelp. It reminded her of her time at Casbah's University. Of home in Casbah, of…. _Sheeeit, not again_.

"How far are we?" She asked.

"Only a few minutes away," he said. The sound of his hooves clopping on the cobblestones sounded exactly like a normal horse's, albeit with a human cadence, rather than a horse's hooves. It reminded her of how much she used to fear horses and hate horseback riding, because she was always afraid she'd fall. Funny, looking at her situation now.

Before long, she found Cosmos coming to a stop in front of a shabby, if lively, looking 2 story stone inn with a thatch and wood roof. Several patrons were stumbling drunkenly, singing what she could only assume as a foreign sailor song, given the facts that a) she had no idea what they were saying, and b) they were dressed something like sailors.

Upon entering, it was like something from a cheesy movie. The cluster of bards stopped singing and playing their instruments, the patrons all stared at her, almost in one motion, and a barmaid halted, spilling her flagon of ale onto the disgusting floor. All eyes were on the amazonian redhead woman with the metal arm and scar that ran from brow to neck. Then, as if possessed, most of the people knelt, looking past Lucy. She looked behind her to see Cosmos almost rolling his eyes at the situation, though he composed himself before anybody rose.

"Hello," he simply said. With that, aside from some looks towards the pair, the inn returned to normal. Before Lucy could make a remark to Cosmos, the barmaid from earlier trotted over, doing a short curtsy for Cosmo, then looking up into Lucy's eyes.

"Greetings, milady, what can I get for ya tonight?"

"Wine? Beer? I'm not entirely sure, I'm not much of a drinker" Lucy responded.

"Not much of a drinker? Here?!" The barmaid laughed, as if Lucy had said the wrong answer; Lucy shifted uneasily, feeling a slight flush creep upcher cheeks.

"Don't worry, we'll have that fixed right up by the end of this evening, little lady!" The barmaid said, still occasionally chuckling. "I'll get you some home brewed mead, the best I can getcha. And for you, your grace? Shall you be gettin a meal? A drink or two?" She asked optimistically.

"Thank you, but I won't be getting anything for the moment," he said simply,

"For the moment, you say?" The barmaid replied with a wink and a chuckle. Alright then. Get yourselves seated, and I'll bring ya your drinks.

"Helluva place," Lucy deadpanned as some urchins went around pickpocketing some better dressed patrons. She looked over at the bards, watching them sing and dance and play their instruments. "Cosmos, have you ever heard of a violin?" She asked him.

"Of course I have," he answered. "Why?"

"No reason," she said as she sat down at a stool at the bar. Before long, the barmaid returned with a pint of mead. A patron looked over to her drink.

"That's a lot for just some mead, especially the stuff they make here," he said gruffly.

"I suppose it is? I'm not a huge drinker myself," she said.

_At least not until tonight_, the thought. She set the glass to her lips and prepared to chug it as a good helljumper would, but thought better of it. It was a rough town, after all, and she was with the king. That must've been bound to put a target on her head. Gingerly, she took a sip. The taste of alcohol hit her first, little surprise there, but a taste of honey followed after. Despite her inhibition, she took another sip. The honey taste slowly overtook the alcohol. Before long, she set her glass down with a heavy plonk and a belch.

"Ma'am," she said, waving at a passing barmaid. The barmaid stopped in front of her, chuckling.

"Fancy talk from you, Valkyrie," she said. "What do you need?"

"More of this mead? And some water, if you please." She looked to Cosmos. "The water here is clean, right?"

"Of course, straight from the river," he explained.

"Good," she said as she turned back to the barmaid, who had already left and returned with her drinks. "That was fast."

"Of course. Now, that it?"

"I think so."

"Righty. Tell me if ya need anything else," the barmaid said before walking off. It didn't take long for Lucy to finish the pint of mead, nor the glass of water. Not long after that, she finished another pint, then another, then a few more. She may have been heavier than most other humans, but her alcohol tolerance left… something to be desired. Before long, she was hammered.

"Y'all got some fuckin violinsss?" Lucy asked as she stumbled towards the bards. Most of them were surprised, or at least curious, but one was willing to humor her.

"I do, milady," one replied, a short fellow with shoulder length golden hair and long, pointy ears. He held out a violin and bow, which Lucy inaccurately took. She set the instrument to her chin and tested the thing with a few strokes of the bow.

"Blegh! Who tuned this thing?"

"I did, milady," the bard who gave her the instrument said.

"You did a piss poor job, Legény," she said as she adjusted it. Before long, she was content with the tuning. "Ready?" She asked, and without waiting for a reply, she started playing an ancient tune, a folk song that was centuries old. She didn't remember the name, but she remembered the lyrics and how to play it.

She started the song up with a drunken and dramatized version of the intro.

"The devil went down to Georgia he was lookin' for a soul to steal"

Most of the people who bothered to pay any attention to her seemed slightly confused about whatever she was singing about, not that she cared much.

"He was in a bind 'cause he was way behind,

And he was willing to make a deal"

By now, some of the more drunk and more relaxed patrons started to sway with the tune. One guy was even clapping along.

"When he came across this young man

Sawing on a fiddle and playing it hot

And the devil jumped up on a hickory stump

And said, "boy let me tell you what I guess you didn't know it but I'm a fiddle player too

And if you'd care to take a dare I'll make a bet with you"

And so the song went, slowly getting more and more sloppy as Lucy improvised bits and pieces through her intoxication. Still, by the end, most of the people watching were clapping and cheering. The bard she took the violin from nodded at her.

"Y'all want another song?" She asked, to a wave of nods and shouts of approval.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey"

Most of the people were confused, though they started to sing along.

"There lived a certain man in Russia long ago

He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow"

Everybody but the most drunk were utterly confused, but most of them at least tried to keep up with a clap.

"Most people looked at him with terror and with fear

But to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear

He could preach the Bible like a preacher

Full of ecstasy and fire

But he also was the kind of teacher

Women would desire"

As soon as people realized that Lucy's music was in no way serious, laughter and more slightly on-beat clapping started up.

"Ra ra Rasputin

Lover of the Russian queen

There was a cat that really was gone

Ra ra Rasputin

Russia's greatest love machine

It was a shame how he carried on"

The inn was suddenly a lively place as drunk patrons started doing their best excuse for dances almost in tune with some other song they must've thought they were hearing. As if a switch had been flicked, people lost their inhibitions and just started to party. Lucy juster managed to finish her song and hand the bard his violin before getting swept up into a crowd of dancing people. In the time, she had plenty more of that delicious mead, as well as some not so decent beers that resulted in vomit in the fireplace. Lucy danced and spun and laughed like she hadn't in years, and boy did she drink. More than once, she blacked out, and more than once, she regained her senses in strange scenarios. One was her cradling one of the urchins that was picking people's pockets earlier, another was her rambling on about the time she fought a brute in hand to hand and how shee one because a longsword crashed on it. Yet another memory was her slamming a small keg of ale, and the final one was her regurgitating the keg.

Several hours passed before Cosmos finally convinced her to leave (really moreso dragged her from) the inn. She remembered clinging tightly to Cosmos to the point he was struggling to breathe. He ended up carrying her, which wasn't much of an issue for him.

"Ey. Cusmaus. Cos. Horsey thinfy," she said, poking his chest as they reached the keep. "Thanks fur tha ride. And tha drinks. And all that. Huh heh heh heh."

"Of course. Now, you should probably get some rest, you had an adventurous night out," he replied softly.

"We need more booze, dontcha think? Heh heh, yeh thassa good idea"

"No, that probably isn't a good idea. You need water and you need sleep. Do you want me to cast a spell on you to help relieve the hangover in the morning?"

"He he he he heh. You just wanna cast nother of ur bullshitiness 'magicgialness' spells so you can see my big ol' ciciket, dontcha?~ Well no need for any abra-kazoo 'Windlancer' specs, I'll just show ya!" And with that, she did exactly what she said she would and pulled her shirt off, shoving her tits right into Cos's face. He pushed her off gently and pulled her shirt back onto her, albeit backwards.

"No need for any displays. You just need rest."

"I need booze, I need sex, I need home. I want to be back with my unit and I want my fuckin family. Dontcha want family? Its such a great thung, and them fuckin space bugs and armored fuckin asshole dinos and methead lookin plucked chicknens will swoop out of nowhere and take it way frum ya. God fuckin dammit!" This tapered off into incoherent rambling, eventually devolving into angry screaming, which was resolved with a gag made of Cos's hand.

He found her room and set her gently down on her stone bed. By then, she was asleep. The new mattress he had put on the bed seemed far more comfortable than the old stone ones. He placed his hands on her chest and stomach, closed his eyes, and muttered an incantation. If all went well, the spell would at least make the after-effects from that night more manageable in the morning.

As he stood and left, he heard Lucy stir. He looked behind her to see her bright eyes glow slightly as they reflected light from the hallway that illuminated him.

"Cus. Thank," she said, before unceremoniously dropping back into her sleep.


	6. Demon Coffee

October (?), 2552

Ravenkeep, Ravenloft

Unknown System, Uncharted Space

Lucy woke with a start. She jolted up and threw the sheets off of her. She calmed down and looked to her side for Marku-

Oh. Right. This wasn't home.

She regretted rising now; not just because she remembered… everything, but because a growing headache was starting to hit her. Then she started to remember why.

"Ugh, shit," she said as she put a hand to her now pounding forehead. "Dur, what time is it? How long did I sleep? How much did I drink?"

"It's about 11am local time, or roughly 7am, given the planet's slower rotation. You slept 12 hours. The date is October 8, 2552. The weather is, as far as I can tell, overcast. Shall I get you coffee? How about a hot bath? And if you'll just allow me to use my nonexistent hands, I could perform a blood test on you."

"Oh hush you malfunctioning computer chip. Actually, some coffee and a bath does sound nice. Hmm… good idea, Dur," Lucy said as she pulled herself out of bed. She was wearing a now very well stained shirt and equally filthy pants. "Shit. What did I do last night?"

Before she could recollect anything, there was a gentle tap at the door. Lucy went to it and opened up, looking skyward, expecting it to be Cosmos with his uncanny ability to appear at any given moment. Instead, she was greeted with a high, feminine voice that was far smaller than she was.

"Hello, Lady Valkyrie," a short Elven woman said. "I was sent to check if you were awake. Seeing that you are, is there anything I can get for you?"

"I… new clothes, and coffee?"

"Coffee?"

"Y'know… coffee… that drink that's like strong, bitter tea. It's dark, it's brewed with the powder from ground up coffee beans and hot water," she explained. The servant seemed confused, but she was obviously trying to connect it to something.

"Oh! You mean like caf?"

"I'm… just gonna say sure. I'll take some caf."

"Alright, I'll be back with all that as soon as I can!" She said. Like that, she was down the hallway and around the corner, gone from sight and sound.

Lucy went to close the door, but decided against it. She peeked her head out of the room and looked around the hallway. Either direction, it led to windows that looked out to the ocean on one side and the cliffs on the other.

She chose westward, looking, choosing to go to the familiar view of the ocean first. The view down from the window was incredible, easily hundreds of meters above the churning sea.

Long, thin islands ringed the bay to form a natural harbor Within the bay were far more ships than Lucy could tell at first blush, congregated at either side of the arch the tower was built on. To the south, rougher, better armed ships were docked in a far more organized manner than the ships to the north.

"What a mess," she observed. A massive jumble of ships were struggling to dock, launch, stay put, load, unload, and so on. The horde of workers crowding the docks like ants, especially from that height.

"Friggin chaos," she said to herself with a grin. It really wasn't much different from the history vids she watched when she was little. She trotted over to the other side. The view was equally stunning, offering a perfect view of the city.

It sprawled out in all directions from the coast, with innumerable buildings packed wall to wall throughout. A massive, white water river roared through the city from the east, faintly audible even from kilometers away and through the glass and din of the city, she could faintly hear it. A wide river rushed through the city, slicing it roughly in half. It split apart no more than a few hundred meters from the keep, just at the base of the arch. Several bridges spanned the river, resembling the old London bridge and crammed full with buildings and plazas that bustled with people. The entire rush of white water was fed by a massive waterfall that tumbled from the cliffs easily a good kilometer above. The water pooled in an angrily frothing rush of a lake that fed the river.

North of the river was a cluster of several stone and steel high rises, the tallest of which was maybe 80 or so meters up, but most were closer to 50, if that. To the south were blocks and blocks of houses and small buildings, stretching for several kilometers until they hit the 50 meter high wall. Whatever else she may think, the city she was in was incredible.

"I suppose I should give a trip through the city a twirl," she told herself. She turned around and went back to her room. Now, after almost a week of living in the room, she had a spare moment to explore it. It was really 3 rooms, the entryway, the bedroom, and the bathroom. The entryway just looked like a medieval version of a dining room combined with a living room, with one side containing a small coffee… er… caf table that was ringed by plush seats; the other side was dominated by a light wooden table and corresponding chairs. Through a hallway was the bedroom. It was plush (as a stone tower with stone beds could be), with that damned bed, a nightstand, and an empty bookshelf; the wall was entirely glass, looking out at the southern port. Lastly, the bathroom. She looked inside. The floor was made up of what looked to be small tiles in a beige and tan checkerboard pattern; a washbasin and what looked like an actual toilet took up one side of the room, while a bathtub took up the other. Unfortunately, there was no showerhead.

"Ah, well shit then. That sucks. Hey, Dur, you want the grand tour? You probably didn't get a great look before," she asked her AI as she entered the bedroom.

"I suppose it couldn't hurt. Please do, then," he replied. Lucy scooped up her helmet and slotted the chip into its receptor.

"The power work ok?" she asked.

"Like a charm," he replied.

"Good," she simply replied as she set the helmet on her head. "God, this is heavy when I'm not wearing the rest of the suit."

"Then carry it."

"Then it's just unwieldy."

"Excuses, excuses, major."

"Oh hush, you," she said as she gave a full view of the final room, the spacious living room. Just as she plonked the helmet down on the dining table, she heard a knock at the door.

"Finally, some coff- caf? Nah, it's coffee," Lucy said to herself as she went to open the door. Outside wasn't the cute, short elven girl, but a tall woman with blood red skin, a tail the length of her body, wicked horns, and white gold eyes

"He-" she started, before 75 kilos of helljumper slammed into her, dousing them both with scalding coffee and throwing the spare clothes everywhere.

"Where the fuck did you come from, szörnyeteg?" Lucy growled.

"Hey, get off of me!" The thing cried, trying and failing to push Lucy off of her. "I said. Get. OFF!" The demonic woman screamed in an unnaturally loud and even more deep voice. Her skin suddenly became uncomfortably hot, evaporating the coffee that splashed on her, and the air smelled of sulfur. Of brimstone. In the half second Lucy pulled back, the demoness shoved her off and sprang to her feet. Lucy rose almost as quickly, towering over the thing. She started to move into a fighting stance, but the thing spoke.

"What's wrong with you?! I bring you caf and clothes and you attack me?! You should be ashamed of yourself!" The demoness said, her voice now more like an angry mother than the devil reincarnate.

"I- I'm sorry… what the fuck are you, though?" Lucy stammered as she slowly drew back into the doorway.

"A Tiefling. Haven't you met a tiefling before?"

"No, how could I have? I'm not from around here." Lucy said, chuckling at the stupidity of the question. "But seriously, you look…"

"What, evil? Yeah, I've heard that before. But how many servants have you heard of being evil?"

"A lot, actually," Luce said, a slight grin on her face remembering all the old shows.

"What? Really? I thought Valkyries came from a realm where the only threat people faced was from outside your walls."

"For the most part, yes, but we had plenty of shows with cheesy butlers as the villain of each episode."

"Show? Episode? How do those two words go together?" The tiefling asked, utter confusion clear on her face.

"Oh, right. That's gonna take a lot of time to explain. Maybe it's best for me to explain it later."

"As you wish, Lady Valkyrie," she said, only then remembering the mess about them. "Ah. I'll get this cleaned up right away," she said, a hint of dark blush creeping onto her face. Lucy tensed a bit and drew further into the doorway. Just as she was closing the door, she heard footsteps coming towards the room. She looked outside, and lo and behold, Cosmos was striding down the hallway towards them, a confused look on his face when he noticed the mess on the floor.

"What happened here?" He asked. Lucy pulled herself back further, and the Tiefling watched her. Lucy was sure that if her eyes were anything but a ball of solid color, she could be seen rolling them.

"Lady Valkyrie tripped and fell on the tray, as all. We're alright," the Tiefling explained, winking at Lucy. Lucy blushed. Maybe she misjudged the dem- lady.

"Yeah. And once again, I'm sorry about all of that," Lucy played along. "And I'm sorry to trouble you, Cosmos, but could I get some fresh clothes and coffee? And perhaps some hot water for a bath?"

"I can get those for you, but there's no need for the latter, you have running heated water in the bathroom. Your society has such technology, does it not?" Cosmos answered, curious to hear her reply.

"Oh, of course, yes. I just… wasn't expecting there to be any here," Lucy said, her face slightly flushed. Now she looked ignorant.

"No need to be embarrassed, you're unfamiliar with everything here, and the keep is far different from the city, mind you," Cosmos said, a slight smile tugging at his face. Lucy couldn't help but feel the slight desire to grin back.

"Thank you, your grace," she said, doing a small curtsy for him, a shit eating grin on her face.

"Oh, shut up with all that," he said, a wider grin on his face. He helped the tiefling servant mop up the mess with the shirts, and that was all Lucy saw as she closed the door.

"Great first impression," Durandel deadpanned.

"Gimme a break, when you spend your whole life hearing stories about evil devils dragging you down to hell and fighting weird looking aliens for your survival, wouldn't your first instinct be to attack?" She snapped at him. She sighed. "I know, it's not a great introduction, and I'll leave it at that," she resolved.

For the next few minutes, she walked around the apartment, eventually finding her way into the bathroom. Indeed, she found several knobs situated just like old bathtub water controls, before panels were common. She turned the red knob, and immediately, a rush of scalding water rushed from the faucet.

"Ahhh, fuck! Hot, god dammit!" She recoiled from it. She turned it off and turned the blue knob. Out came a torrent of ice cold water, audibly hissing when it hit the scalding water below. Within seconds, the room was fogged up with mist. She gingerly turned off the blue knob. This time, she put both hands on both knobs and turned them both, slightly more on the warm side. Soon, she got the hang of it and had perfectly hot water about of the way up the tub.

"Much better," she told herself. She slipped out of her filthy clothes and grabbed a towel that seemed surprisingly similar to a common linen towel she'd find at some home supplies store. When all was set, she sunk herself into the steamy water and drifted off into daydreaming.

"Hey, Luce?"

"Yeah, Mark?"

"Remember when we first met and we got drunk and you had a violin fight on the maglev with that old guy?"

"Heh, yeah. That's where I learned how to play flip music on a violin."

"I remember. Where is your violin? Could I give it a shot?"

"Not a chance, buckaroo! I'm willing to share most of my stuff with you. My time, my love, my body~ And my quesadilla when you don't order the large burrito and end up going hungry!"

"Oh, hush now, that was you. And where is the violin? Maybe you could play something?"

"Sure. I'll get it."

"In your state? Nonsense! Just tell me where it is, and I'll grab it."

"What, you think just because I'm pregnant I can't walk? I'm a cripple or something? Huh?"

"Of course not, love. But you do complain about how heavy he is."

"Yeah, I guess you can get the violin. It's either under the bed or it's by the bookshelf."

"Anything you need while I'm up?"

"Tell me some good news when you come back?"

"You got it."

"And some coffee?"

"Coffee coming right up. Decaf, that is."

"What's the harm of normal?"

"It's bad for the kid. Besides, you and I both know damn well you like the decaf better, anyway, love. I'll be right back. Gimme a kiss?"

"Of course!"

"Markus! Leo! Where are you?!"

"Over here!"

"Contact!"

"Are the spartans leaving us?!"

"Shut up and mow 'em down!"

"Civvies, load up! 30 people a ship, no more!"

"Markus!!! Leo!!! Where are you?!"

"Lucy! Farthest ship left!"

"Is that you, mommy?"

"None other! Are you two ok?"

"Yeah, just a little shaken. A few close calls. I think we're the only ones from the apartment building who made it out."

"Mrs. Anderson didn't make it?"

"I saw her. I know she didn't."

"Cool."

"Now, now, don't touch that."

"Awww."

"Everybody load up! Well? Come on!"

"I love you guys, lets ge-"

_BUMF__Thud._

"Eeeeeiy!"

"Nishum kyra mut vey antangu Mev'ut, japhat?"

"Kibaszott undorító szörnyű kurva! Rothadás a polkoban, akkor kibaszott dinoszauruszok!"

"Calm down. Major, calm down, I'm a spartan."

"Dawn, we have a wounded command level officer. We're moving to the extraction point. Make sure a surgery suite's ready for her."

Lucy woke up with an explosive gasp, swallowing water. She panicked and rose up, her head breaking from the water into an even foggier bathroom than before. She coughed up water for what felt like hours, but she knew was seconds. She came to her senses and realized what she had been dreaming of. She started to cry. To sob. She didn't stop, she couldn't stop. For what again felt like hours, she couldn't stop thinking about her dream. How she remembered all of it, word for word, detail for detail. Of all the things she could and couldn't remember, that was what she could. That was what she knew she always would; long after the rest of her mind went south, she would remember that.

She looked into the clear, warm water around her, and a thought popped into her head.

_I could do it, right here and right now. I could just end it. There's no door override to confirm, safety to flick off, no strange creatures to surprise me. Nothing to stop me from doing it, _she thought. Right as her nose just touched the water, she heard a knock at the apartment door. Despite her desire lurking at the tip of her nose, she pulled herself out of the water, wrapped a towel around herself, and stomped up to the door.

"What, I'm very busy right now?!" She snapped. She looked up to see Cosmos holding a mug of coffee and a neatly folded powder blue dress.

"Is this a bad time?" He asked her.

"No, not at all," she explained, unsure if the color had drained from her face or rushed in at full force. "Thank you for this," she said, holding her head down as she took the fresh clothes and the hot drink.

"You're welcome," he said. He seemed to have something to say, but he didn't say it.

"What is it?" Lucy asked.

"Get dressed, there's somebody I'd like for you to meet."


	7. Family Reunion

October 8, 2552

Ravenkeep, Ravenloft

Unknown System, Uncharted Space

"Oh, who?" Lucy asked.

"Someone… close to me. Family." Cosmos answered, a hint of pain on his face.

"I'll be ready in just a minute," she said, closing the door. She trotted into the bedroom and towelled herself dry, then slipped into her clothes. The dress accented her curves well, clinging tightly to her. From what she could tell, it was tailored for a tall lady, but had to be adjusted for her. In the end, it worked well enough. She slipped into her boots, which were fortunately mostly clean, and walked into the hallway.

"So," she said slightly sharp. "Where to?"

"The roof," Cos said simply. "If you'd follow me, please."

"Just one second, I forgot something," Lucy said, slipping back into her apartment. She grabbed her knife and slipped it into her boot. If anything weird happened, she'd be prepared. A moment later, she popped out of the room and closed the door.

"Lead the way," she told Cosmos, and indeed he did. Even slowing his pace, she struggled to keep up with him. As they made it into the lift and the doors closed, she looked up at him.

"So who do you want me to meet? You said 'family.'"

"My son."

"You have a family? Well, duh, but that sort of family?"

"My adoptive son."

"Ah." The lift came to a stop andthe doors opened to the roof. Above them, the glass dome was sparkling in the morning sun. The grassy ground was dotted with the occasional shrub and a small, weathered tree. She looked out to the cliffs, seeing the mountains that eventually fed the raging waterfall. Their snow capped peaks glowed in the morning light. Only when she turned around to get the view of the other side of the tower did she see why she was there: Cos had his arm on the shoulder of a tall, well built man with sandy blond hair. All Lucy could tell from behind was his hair color, his height and build (about as tall as her, though more square), and his outfit, some comfortable, yet slightly fancy, traveller's clothes. She trotted over with curiosity.

How did he end up adopting someone? Was the first thought that popped into her head. She closed the gap and was about to say something to get her attention when the human turned around and met her eyes. His eyes were a similar emerald shade, and he had a scar running from hairline to brow.

"Hello, Lady Valkyrie," he said to her, bowing.

"Hello, Sir. And you can just call me Lucy," she said, grinning at the bow.

"Very well, Lucy. A pleasure to meet you. I was in town when I heard the Valkyrie had arrived, and I figured that it would be interesting to meet you, as well as a good chance to finally visit here after so long."

Lucy just smiled. She was made more for fighting than diplomacy and chatting, hence why she refused promotions that would've taken her from the field.

"I suppose you both must be hungry?" Cos asked the two.

"Yes," they said in unison.

"I'll have some food brought up. What would you like?"

"Anything seafood," He said.

"Surprise me," she said. With that, he went off to the lift, giving them time to talk.

"So, I never got a name from you," Lucy said.

"Oh, it's Vorugar," he said, his gaze flicking between her face and her right arm.

"Curious?" She asked.

"If you'd humor me."

"Lost in combat," she said simply.

"Must've been quite the duel."

Lucy took a deep breath. "Not exactly."

"Ah, I won't go further."

"Thank you. So, I know this is rude, but may I ask how old you are?"

"That's not rude at all. I'm 452 years old," Vorugar said with a completely straight face. Lucy wasn't sure if she should laugh at the obvious joke or actually believe it. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.

"You look… fresh for that age," she said simply, before something clicked. "Are you a vampire?"

"Me? Gods, no, no." He said, laughing. "No, I'm a dragon."

How badly have I sinned to be sent to this fever dream of a planet? Lucy thought to herself.

"Prove it." She said simply.

So he grew wings. Leathery, reptilian wings. In less than a second, they seemingly appeared and unfurled, spreading out almost 3 meters in either direction.

"Tir wux jikahshi ve jaka?" He said to her.

"Drágám, fogalmam sincs, mit mondtál. Talán ha lassabban beszélsz?" She responded, the beginnings of a shit eating grin on her face.

"Ryeyir zmiz?" He responded simply. Lucy's grin disappeared. She was stumped, having just English and Hungarian in her arsenal.

"Ok, the game is up. What did you say originally?" She asked.

"Do you believe me now?" He repeated, now in English.

"In this hel- In a place like this? No, I'd still just chalk it down to magic. I'd have to see you transform into an actual dragon to believe you."

"Maybe another time. When I leave, perhaps," he said, smirk still on his face.

"When exactly would that be?" She replied simply.

"That would depend on when Da- Cosmos and I are finished with our yearly tradition," he said with a look to Cosmos.

"Mind if I ask what that tradition is?" She asked, slightly curious.

"Well… that would be a visit to Joanna," replied Cosmos as he walked out of the lift.

"Joanna?" Lucy asked, sensing the air start to feel somber. "And when did you get back?" She asked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Joanna was… I'll tell you when we get there. If you want to come along, that is," said Cosmos as a light twinge of sorrow flashed across his face.

"Are you sure I'm welcome? This seems… deeply personal to you."

"It is. Though if he trusts you enough to offer to come along, I shall as well," said Vorugar, looking between the other two.

"Ok, then I'll go. When do we leave?" she asked, holding her stomach. As she noticed where her hand was, she realized she hadn't eaten since before she dislocated her rib. "Will we have time to eat beforehand, or should I bring something along with us?"

"We can leave whenever we're all ready," said Cosmos, "We'll pack some things as well as eat beforehand. It will take much of the day to get there."

"Ok. And I don't mean to be rude, but when will the food from earlier arrive?" she asked, blush creeping up her cheeks.

"Has it not arrived?" he asked, "if so, I'll have to go check on it myself."

"If it had, I didn't not- Oh! Here it is," Lucy said, her cheeks almost glowing with blush. She picked up two platters, one with several sandwiches with some time of fish, and the other what looked like a small, 4 legged chicken. "Found the food," she said, offering Vorugar his platter of sandwiches.

He took it and slowly started munching on one as Cosmos also took one.

"I have a few things to attend to for a moment. Vorugar, you know how to let me know when you two are ready," he said before he walked out of the room.

Lucy started on the chicken thing. It looked unusual for a breakfast food, but it was surprisingly soft and sweet, almost like some sort of bread. Within a few minutes, she finished, suppressing a belch as she wiped her hands on her dress.

"Satisfied?" asked Vorugar with a smirk, "quite the sound from a lady."

"I'm a lady by gender and title only. What else about me yells 'lady' to you?" She said, a grin of her own forming.

"Less and less as I'm around you more," he replied.

Lucy chuckled. "Spend a day as a helljumper and you'll see why. Spend 6 years as one, and you'll scoff at being ladylike. Or gentlemanly, for that matter."

He cocked his head a little with a confused look. "Helljumper? What does that mean?"

"Depends, how much time do you have for me to talk?"

"We should leave soon so we can make it before nightfall, but from there we'll have all night," he said as he grabbed another sandwich.

"I could talk as we go," Lucy said. "I should pack a bag with food, water, and the likes, then I'm ready to go."

"Of course. Do you need any help?"

"If anything, maybe order some good traveling food? I can cover the rest," she said reassuringly.

"I'm sure there's some prepared already. Cosmos should have it," he replied as he reached for the last sandwich.

"Ok. I'll meet you… where, exactly?" She said, rising to her feet.

"I'll be in the hallway."

"There's plenty of hallways in this tower. Where exactly should I meet you?"

"What floor are you staying on?" he asked.

"I'm not sure, actually. Shit, now I gotta find a way back to my room when I don't know where to find it," she sighed. "Where could I find out?"

"Let's just go find it."

"I hope your sleuthing skills are better than mine, then. I never trained to be a detective."

"What was the bed and room like? That will make it much easier," he said as he started for the door.

"3 rooms, a living and dining area, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The bed's stone. I think Cosmos said it was on the 'diplomat level' or 'noble level' or something like that."

"Ah, yes. The diplomat level," he smirked as he walked down, "Let's move you somewhere more comfortable while we're at it. I'm a little surprised he hasn't already done so."

"He at least put a mattress on the bed. Besides, it wasn't the first time I had slept on rocks, nor was it the least comfortable time."

"Either way, we shall move you somewhere more comfortable. Next to his personal chambers, perhaps?" he smirked at Lucy as they made their way down the stairs.

"I wouldn't want to bother him," Lucy said as they entered the hallway that lead to her room. She knew where they were from the lingering smell of coffee.

"This is it," she said as they reached the door. "I'll be right back," she said as she slipped inside. She slipped into her armor and packed for a few day's journey, with clothes, a compact bedroll, and a first aid kit.

"Ok, ready to go?" She said as she popped out.

"When you are," he replied.

"Ok then, let's go," she said.

His fingers waved through the air for a moment and he seemed to mutter something before he turned to her.

"He will meet us at the front gates," he said before he turned towards the stairs once again.

"Ok then, see you there," Lucy said, hiking her bag onto her back and stepping into the lift. Somehow, by the time she'd reached the ground floor and walked out to the courtyard only a minute later, Vorugar had already arrived at the gates.

Cosmos walked out from the doors moments later.

"Both of you ready?" he asked, a large bag over his own back.

"Let's roll," Lucy said. "How are we getting there?"

"We walk. Unless your injuries are still causing issues, that is," Cosmos said as he looked her over.

"I'm quite alright," Lucy said. "Then I suppose we're off."


	8. Family Reunion 2

October 8, 2552, 3140 Hours

Songbird Vale, Kingdom of Ravenloft

Unknown System, Uncharted Space

"So, this is the place?" Lucy asked as they crested the hill. The picturesque view ahead of her was all the answer she needed

Before them was a meadow that looked like something from the Swiss Alps. Wildflowers grew up to Lucy's knee, going on until a sudden drop that looked like 200 or so meters ahead. In the center of the meadow was a small hill with a lone Juniper tree at its peak with a smooth, round stone nestled against the roots.

"Is that her?" Lucy asked, nodding her head at the stone.

"Yes," Cos said simply.

"It's beautiful," she said.

"She loved this place," Vorugar explained, leading the trio to the base of the hill. The suns were behind them, starting to set into the cliffs and sea at their back, its light shining on the glossy black stone, igniting it brilliant oranges and reds.

Vorguar knelt at the stone's side and cos simply looked at it. From 10 meters behind them, Lucy could just pick up hushed tones from them each, though she couldn't understand either of them.

The suns slipped beneath the horizon and night quickly descended upon the trio on the hill, though, like usual, it was quite bright out.

Lucy looked up at the stars. They shone more brilliantly than she remembered from her trek across the grasslands. As she stargazed, Cosmos walked by her, plucked some wildflowers, and lay them at the stone's feet. Silently, she slipped to his side. In the fading sunlight and the growing starlight, she could clearly read the words engraved on the stone.

_Dream peacefully and sleep well, my Queen__Born 1 Juk, 776 a.o, Died 14 Ord 838 a.o_, it read. On it was a thin, loopy scribble that was just comprehensible as saying "Joanna of Ravenloft," and an intricately carved picture of a young laughing woman with long, flowing hair.

"Queen" Lucy said, finally putting everything together. This certainly was an important meeting. The stone had faded from yellows and oranges to black, then lit up milky whites and blues with the stars overhead. Cosmos looked at her.

"She loved this place. She loved everywhere, the beach, the keep, the port, even the dangerous neighborhoods, but this was her favorite place. She felt at peace here. She always said she felt like a guardian of the kingdom from here. You can look due west and just see the top of the Tower of the Flare, just see the pinnacle of our kingdom," he explained wistfully.

Lucy sighed as she took in the view. Mountains loomed on 3 sides, all covered in wildflowers and trees and snow, lit beautifully by the starlight and moonlight. If there was any place worth burying somebody, this was the place.

_If only Markus and Leo got this treatment. Instead, at best, they get a body bag and cremation. At worst, their corpses are probably being left to rot on the pavement_, she thought bitterly. She felt pressure welling up in her eyes, but she didn't feel the first tear fall, nor the second. She only realized what had happened when she was kneeling in front of the stone, sobbing.

"It's not fair," she muttered between sobs. Cosmos sat beside her and set an arm on her shoulder. She felt like she should shrug it off, that she had a right to deal with her own problems without anybody else trying to help, trying to meddle, but she realized they had both lost their spouses. He too had been through this, maybe not in the same way, but it had ended all the same.

"What was he like?" He asked her.

"Caring. Hardworking. He always had good news. When I was on deployment, he'd somehow manage to play the role of both mom and dad," she answered, sobbing, then laughing and sobbing. "What was she like?"

"Gentle, calm, sweet. She was the perfect mother for Vorguar, and the counterbalance I desperately needed then."

"Sounds like my exact opposite," Lucy said, unsuccessfully trying to avoid a chuckle. Fortunately, Cosmos flashed his unnerving grin at the idea.

"From what I've gathered, you're not far off the mark, but you're also quite like her too," he said gently, his grin slowly fading as he sunk into his thoughts.

"How so?" Lucy inquired.

"Well, she was a fan of mead," Cosmos poked at her.

"Ugh, that was the only good part of that night. That, and the violin," she said, rolling her eyes. Despite herself, she couldn't help but grin.

"She was creative, too. Just like you were, clearly improvising some of those songs."

"Improvising? I sang each of those songs word for word!" She said, lightly punching Cos's fairly muscular bicep.

"Indeed, I'm sure songs in your realm go, and I quote, 'Fire your guns, it's time to run… uhhh… lets have some fun'".

"I call bullshit," Lucy said with a grin. "No way I botched that song THAT terribly."

"You better believe you did," Cosmos said with an ear to ear smile. "If it means anything to you, you play a violin drunk better than most 'musicians' I've met do sober."

"Hey, drunk means improvisation, and if what you said is true, I can improv to make something even better than the original," Lucy said, trying (and slowly but surely failing) to keep a straight face.

"I'll have to take your word on that," Cosmos said with a smile.

Vorguar came up behind them, shouldering his large bag and holding a bedroll.

"I'll be off to sleep now, D- Cosmos. I'll see you two in the morning," he said, spinning around and setting his bedroll up a few dozen meters away from the grave. Within less than a minute, he was violently snoring.

"He'd make a helljumper in no time," Lucy said, smiling.

"Joanna could hardly handle his snoring, even when he was just a wyrmling," Cosmos said, a grin growing on his face once again.

"Christ, you should've seen Leo when he was a newborn, he just cried and cried and cried. He was fed, he was burped, I sang to him, he got rest, he got his diapers changed, but he just never stopped crying," Lucy said, her eyes getting misty.

"You don't need to go any further if you don't want to," Cosmos said.

"Thanks, but…" She tried, "Yeah, alright," she conceded. "We haven't eaten in awhile. I suppose we should make a late meal?"

"That sounds good to me. What would you like?"

"Surprise me," Lucy asked. They'd brought plenty of food with them, and she knew just how many different combinations of food one could make with a few MREs. She looked over to see Cosmos cutting some loaves of bread in two and slathering the insides with some weird purple and grey marbled goop.

"Seems alien to you?" Cosmos half asked, half observed, giving her a sideways stare as his vision flicked between the food and her.

"In every sense of the word. What is it?"

"Jailjam Jelly on Barma bread. It tastes like garlic and has the consistency of butter. Just heat it to crispness and it's ready to serve."

"Sounds like garlic bread."

"Garlic bread?"

"… Yeah… garlic bread. You just basically described it, it's minced up garlic mixed with butter and spread across some bread, cut just like that, maybe sprinkle some paprika on it and just cook it up. Mmmmmm mmm, god damn, that's a staple food."

"Sounds delicious," Cosmos said, lighting a small fire to heat up the bread.

"You bet your ass it is. My mom makes the best damn garlic bread you've ever had, as long as you don't mind it looking like a murder scene from all the paprika," Lucy reminisced.

"Paprika?" Cosmos cocked his head in confusion.

"Spice that my family loves. You just take peppers and dry them, then you mill it while you heat it, and bam, that powder is Grade-A spice!"

"You seem quite passionate about paprika," Cosmos observed.

"Well, when your mom's a native from Reach, you damn well bet you love paprika!"

"Reach?" Cosmos asked, immediately dampening Lucy's spirits, though He quickly lifted her spirits when he cut up the now hot bread and offered her a loaf.

"Thanks. And yeah, Reach, the planet. The battle was essentially my century's Pearl Harbor, you see. It was a slaughter, when it really shouldn't've been."

"Pearl Harbor?" Cos asked, now far more confused than his paprika ignorance made him a few moments ago.

"Hooo boy. How long are nights here? I have quite the story for you."

"It's mid spring now, so about… 18 hours. It's about 14:30 pm now. We still aren't even close to midnight, anyway. We have time," Cos explained. Lucy ran the numbers in her head and guessed it was probably about equal to 9 or 10. Hopefully that would be enough time for a history lesson

"Well, it started about 200,000 years ago…" Lucy began, going onto a 14 hour long history lesson, ending it with the Battle of Epsilon Eridani, right as the suns were rising. Somehow, she had managed to stay up and describe, in detail, almost all of human history that she managed to remember, with plenty of questions from Cosmos and nearly as many tangents.

"… and that is why my people are probably doomed!" She finished dramatically, closing the metaphorical history book, her rant, and the conversation, right as the first light was peeking over the mountain peaks.

"Wait a minute… is that the sun?!" Lucy said, only then realizing how long she'd gone on.

"Yep," Cosmos said, holding back a chuckle. Vorguar just started to stir, rolling to face them.

"You two are some early risers," he observed, coaxing a giggle from Lucy, then Cosmos. Vorguar just looked at them confused as he rolled up the bedroll and packed his bag.

"Are you ready to go? You must be tired, perhaps we should wait to travel," Cosmos asked Lucy.

"Nah, I'm hardly tired after this, I've pulled way more time than this in combat," she explained, even as she rose shakily to her feet and scooped up her bag. As she slung it onto her back and checked her armor. She had all her gear on her, what little that was. _Pistol: holstered. Pouches: clipped on. Ruck: closed. Knife. Oh fuck, where's my kni- wait_, she thought as she checked her boot. There it is, still in place. With that, she clicked her helmet on and looked at father and son, who were both saying their goodbyes to the tombstone. It felt wrong for her not to say something as well, so she strode up to it and put a hand on the tree.

_Thank you_, she thought to the woman buried beneath her. Why, Lucy didn't know, but she did know that this trip had helped her in some way.

She spun around and looked back at Cosmos and Vorguar, looking at her and beyond her, respectively.

"Are we ready to go?" Lucy asked the pair.

"As soon as you are," Vorguar responded.

"Then I suppose we're off," she replied.


	9. Shock and Claw

October 9, 2552, 1102 Hours

Songbird Vale, Kingdom of Ravenloft

Unknown System, Uncharted Space

Lucy watched as Vorguar waved goodbye to the grave. In only a few steps, they had descended beyond the crest of the mesa they had spent the night on. Lucy breathed easy, remembering the sense of relief she felt soon before they left.

She looked down the slope towards the valley they slowly marched into. To one side of the path was dense forest that slowly grew to take up most of the valley floor. To the other, no more than 25 or so meters away, was a sudden drop several hundred meters down a gorge into the rushing river that led back to Ravenloft. She sighed as the suns peeked over the ridge behind them and lit up the decline they walked. Flowers at their sides slowly bloomed in the light, bringing a rush of colors to the fields. Off the cliff, the rush of the river sent an almost melodic tune wavering up the sides of the mountains. Whoever chose to bury Joanna here did a good job.

"How often do you visit her?" she asked Vorguar.

"Once a year, always at the same date, should nature permit," he replied. "You like the view?"

"It's gorgeous," Lucy yawned, garbling her response. "I do," she clarified.

"Tired?" Vorguar inquired.

"Not enough to sleep," she said.

"If you do get tired, remember, I'm a dragon. I can just transform and you can sleep on me while we fly back home," he offered her.

"I'll keep it in mind, thank you," she answered, trying to remain both polite and awake. _Sure you are_, she thought to herself, though she was starting to believe it may not be impossible

The next few hours passed without event. Soon after they exited the woods, Lucy broke off from the group to answer the call of nature.

After zipping up, she noticed a pile of stones. For no particular reason, she picked up one and chucked it into the brush. It clacked on some rocks on the other side of the shrubbery, getting a rise from the tired helljumper.

She picked up another one, this one a little bit heavier than a gravball, and readied her left arm, her organic arm, and aimed for a long throw. She launched it with all the force she could muster, getting it about 50 meters away, from what she could estimate, an impressive throw, given her dreariness. It too clacked on a larger rock she couldn't see. She picked up another one with her right arm and felt it click and clack in her padded metal palm. Again, with all her strength, she launched it as far as she could. This one looked like it flew about 60 meters, even more impressive, given her left handiness. She heard it hit something… softer than a rock.

She heard a growl. Then a roar. Something ripped a plant aside and stomped forward, roared, and burst out of the shrub 50 meters distant. A hunched 4 meter tall bipedal Gúta looking creature stopped and locked its eyes on Lucy's faceplate. It roared and thundered toward her.

Lucy gaped at the thing, but managed to snap out of her shock and spin around, launching herself at a nearby tall, weathered oak tree with an inhuman burst of speed, all the while the creature was hot on her heels.

"Holy SHIIIIIIITTTT!!" she screamed, scrambling up the tree, the creature growling and clawing at her and the tree. Within a dozen seconds from the rock hitting the creature, she had climbed up almost 20 meters of branches and leaves, only stopping when the branches were too weak to support her, all the while fueled only by adrenaline.

"Help!" she screamed, hoping Cosmos or Vorguar would hear her. Her mind fell into combat mode, assessing her being and planning her next step. _Am I wounded?_ She thought, performing a pain check. _No, I'm clear. I can wait it out or fight the thing until I reach safety._ She looked in the direction of the path in search of Cos or Vorguar, to no luck. The tree shuddered as the creature started to hack away at the tree's trunk with its wicked claws. _I don't have much time or support, so combat's a better bet. Do I have my weapons? Shotgun: no. Battle Rifle: no. Pis- Pistol!_

She grabbed her pistol from her chestplate and swung her gun down, aiming it at the creature that was diligently ripping the tree to ribbons. She flicked the safety off and made sure a round was chambered. She fired, the .50 cal round hitting a branch and missing the creature. Round 2 struck true, hitting one of its spearlike front facing horns, goading a roar from the creature. Another shot rang out, hitting it right on the crown of its skull, only enranging it. The tree started to lean, throwing her off target right as she fired. The round struck the ground only inches from the thing's foot. She readjusted her aim and fired. Dud. She moved to eject the round, but the creature rammed the tree with its head, doing it in and sending it plummeting.

The sudden jolt of the tree falling caught her off guard, leaving her to drop like a stone. She landed with a thud, but fortunately, her armor protected her from serious harm. She checked herself rapidly for injuries and a weapon. Fortunately, she was well enough to sit up, but she only had her knife. _Oh well_, she thought. _If I die, I do it on my feet! _She rose shakily and watched the creature struggle to climb over the log. Finally, it summited the felled tree and flopped to the ground, quickly rising. Once again, it roared.

"Bring it, dinoszaurusz!" She screamed, checking her stance. The creature charge-

A deep screech, like the monster godzilla from old holofilms she'd watched, echoed through the valley. Both Lucy and the creature hesitated, both in a combat pose. A cloud of green gas shot out from the direction of the path. Lucy instinctively ducked and rolled away from the cloud into the cover of the tree, clicking her helmet's seals closed. The creature recoiled when the gas reached it, fleeing to the edge of the cloud, now back in its combat pose, snarling at whatever the source was.

Lucy heard the sound of massive wings beating through the air, along with another screech. She dared to look away from the creature towards whatever was causing the noises and saw an honest to god dragon hovering not 30 meters away. It glowed bronze in the morning light, its metallic spines glittering beautifully, but nonetheless menacingly.

"Lucy, get back here before it attacks you!" The dragon said in Vorguar's voice, albeit deeper. She complied, keeping her eyes between the dragon and the groundbound creature. She edged back towards the path, into Cosmos's arms.

"Are you alright?" He asked her, spinning her around a full 360 to inspect her for serious injuries.

"Yes, I'm fine," she answered. "But I lost my gun out there," she answered, seeing the unmistakable glint of gunmetal right at the feet of the predator. "Shiiiet," she murmured.

"It's not worth it, it's just a machine, not a life," he told her. Despite being right, the comment rubbed her the wrong way. Nonetheless, she complied, falling back to the path with Cosmos. Vorguar landed in front of them, tipping a wing towards the pair.

"I can't guarantee it will stay back. Climb aboard," he ordered. "We don't need to kill it." This too rubbed her the wrong way, and for a second, she considered going back.

_An enemy left unfinished is an enemy that can strike again at a later date,_ she rationalized. Cosmos planted a hand on her shoulder.

"Don't. It's a simple creature, it won't do us harm after we've left," he explained.

"How did yo-"

"I've worked with soldiers before. We don't have time to debate this."

"Ok," Lucy said, climbing onto Vorguar, 'saddling up' in front of Cosmos. "All aboard!" She shouted to Vorguar, getting a nod before he got a short running start and took off high into the sky. She checked her armor's seal, just in case Vorguar decided to do some high altitude flying.

"So, will you take me up on that offer for a ride and some rest?" Vorguar called to Lucy.

"Ironically enough, I've never enjoyed flying like this," she chuckled "So I think I'll pass." She decided to enjoy the view ahead of her best she could, making sure to cling tightly to Vorguar's spines. Before she could enjoy the scene below her though, a question filled her head.

"What was that thing?" She asked Cosmos. It looked and acted like a Gúta, it could even shrug off rounds like one, but no Gúta she'd ever seen was so small or so fast.

"A Razorclaw. You're lucky you weren't alone, not much can take one down on their own, save maybe a dragon," he said. Lucy shuddered, but reminded herself that she'd fought worse. _Ah, hell. No good'll come from fretting about it_, she realized. There were better things to focus on, like the extraordinary flight she was taking.

As they soared westward, she soaked in the view of rolling green hills, looking south to the hills, then further still the endless fields of grass. She yawned and leaned back into Cosmos. "I suppose I could just take a few minutes of rest," she said.

"We both know you'll sleep way longer than that," he said with a grin.

"Yeah," she laughed. "Ok, well then just don't drop me," she poked back.

"You have my word, I won't. Not until we get home, at least."

"You better not then, either," she said, relaxing into Cosmos' grip. Before he could reply, she was snoring soundly, as she did for the rest of the flight.

* * *

**I suppose it's best to say the obvious: I don't own Halo, nor do I own Dungeons and Dragons or Star Wars. 343i/Microsoft Studios, Wizards of the Coast, and Lucasfilms (God help them)/Walt Disney Company, respectively.**


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